Tamil Nadu CM lays foundation stone for Keeladi museum

MADURAI: Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Monday laid the foundation stone for a museum at Konthagai village near Keeladi in Sivagangai district. The museum will showcase the artefacts unearthed from the Keeladi ancient site.
The museum will be built by the heritage wing of public works department at Rs 12.21 crore on 81 cents of land.
The first excavation was carried out at Keeladi from 2014 to 2015.
In 2014, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) started excavating the 110 acres site located 13km away from Madurai on the Rameswaram road.
ASI continued the second and third phase of excavations in 2015-16 and 2016-17 respectively.
In consultation with the ASI, the state archaeology department started the fourth phase of excavations in 2017-18 with Rs 55 lakh sanctioned by the state government. As many as 5,820 rare artefacts and brick constructions dating back to the Sangam era were excavated in this phase.
Close to 900 artefacts were excavated in the fifth phase excavation in 2018-19 that was carried out at Rs 47 lakh. It included different forms of brick constructions.
The ongoing sixth phase began on February 19, 2020. So far more than 14,535 artefacts, including earthenware, iron articles, coins, rings, ivory articles, pottery with Tamil writings and markings were unearthed.
A statement from the government says Keeladi is testimony to the civilisation of Tamils dating back to 2,600 years ago. The museum will highlight this rich civilisation by displaying the artefacts for the generations to come.
Ministers K Pandiarajan (Tamil official language and Tamil culture) and G Baskaran (khadi and village industries board), chief secretary K Shanmugam, additional chief secretary for tourism and culture department Vikram Kapur and principal secretary and commissioner of department of archaeology T Udhayachandran were present when the chief minister laid the foundation stone for the museum via videoconferencing from Chennai.